Mortal
by Commander
Summary: Yakko Warner grapples with his mortality. One shot, thank goodness!


(AN: Hi, I'm Commander! You know, watching my new Animaniacs DVDs has done something that I thought would never happen to me—it inspired me to write another Animaniacs fanfic. (recoils in horror) Uh, I mean… alright, I admit it. I've written Animaniacs fics before. Those of you who remember them… I've gotten a bit better since then. Those of you who DON'T remember them, then I beg of you, IGNORE THEM! PLEASE!

Okay, truthfully, this one-shot is in no way related to my other A! fics, for the main reason that I desperately want to destroy all evidence of my older fanfiction, which yes, includes everything Animaniacal I've written. They suck. Admit it. (cough) Where was I? Oh yes. Unlike my previous A! stories, this one is actually told within the universe of the characters, not making the Warner just actors for a TV show. If you get my meaning.

Man, I never in a million years thought I'd be returning to the Animaniacs section here. Never.

I don't own Animaniacs or any of the characters mentioned in this story. Don't sue me. It would be pointless. All you'd get is a laptop with weird games and files on it, an iPod with weird music on it, some random DVDs of weird movies and TV shows, and a talking Jack Sparrow figure that says weird things.

Please read and review, whatever your opinion of my story may be. I love getting feedback, be it positive or negative.)

O.o.O

Waiting for one's psychiatric appointment was, quite possibly, one of the most boring tasks in the world.

Yakko Warner stretched his long legs and made a very loud sigh, making sure everyone else in the room could hear him. It wasn't as if Scratchy was terribly busy today. In fact, Yakko highly doubted that he was seeing anyone at that moment. He was just stalling time. Probably taking an aspirin or two in advance. It had been five years since Dr. Scratchensniff had met the Warner siblings, and he still couldn't stand them. Or control them.

Five years. Yakko rolled his eyes. He and his siblings had been seeing the same doctor for five years now! It was pathetic. Couldn't folks just give up and accept that these kids weren't going to be controlled? It would save EVERYONE the trouble. Scratchy would certainly be happy to dismiss the Warners from his office—for good.

The bored… creature looked around the waiting room, searching for something to read. That was another bummer about having to go to appointments with Scratchy so much—the magazines were dull, boring, and often at least two months out of date. When all three Warner siblings went to their joint appointments, this wasn't a problem—the three of them were able to keep themselves entertained. But Scratchy also had individual sessions with each sibling, and being in the room by one's lonesome was almost too boring to bear. Yakko had suggested that Scratchy provide porn magazines, but Scratchy had turned this idea down flat. Surprisingly. Come on, wouldn't that boost business? People would _flock _to see him, and _hope _that there was a long wait!

But Scratchy, in all his misguided psychology, considered Yakko's porn obsession to be a major problem in the oldest Warner sibling's life. Yakko sniffed to himself. It wasn't an obsession! Well… not really. Okay, so it sort of was. It had started out innocently enough—Yakko had simply grown tired of being referred to as a "kid". Because he wasn't a kid. And yet he was. Legally speaking, he was completely adult—a senior citizen, even. He had been "born"—created, actually—in 1930, and it was now 1998. Do the math. Sixty-eight years old! (In a year he'd be sixty-nine, which was something he knew he'd get a major kick out of.) And still he was eternally a child, forever a thirteen-year-old.

It was SO aggravating.

Yakko never told Scratchy about these conflicts that he felt, however. The last thing Yakko wanted to do was slip and let the psychiatrist know that he actually WAS a complex, feeling creature, with reasons behind the madness. For, you see, that would just prove him right.

Yakko, groaning perhaps a bit too loudly (STILL no one was looking at him, however—seems everyone had finally gotten used to the Warners), reached for a newspaper. Definitely not as interesting as a good dirty magazine, but at least it was _something._

And suddenly, a small article, in the bottom corner of the paper, caught his eye.

"GERTIE THE DINOSAUR DEAD OF NATURAL CAUSES," the headline said. Yakko, rubbing his eyes as if he were seeing things, read on.

"_HOLLYWOOD: Gertie the Dinosaur, one of the earliest cartoon stars, died yesterday while dining at a Ruby Tuesday's with Felix the Cat._

"_The death has confused authorities, who state that no foul play was involved and that Gertie appears to have died from natural causes—destroying the previously held idea that toons are immortal._

"'_No poison in the food, the water, nothing,' police officer Oliver Woodward said. 'And even if there was, it wouldn't have killed the toon, unless he knew it was in there and let it kill him.'_

"_Eyewitnesses on the scene report the death as a strangely serene affair, with the dinosaur, who appeared in a breakthrough 1914 cartoon, simply leaning down on the table as if he had fallen asleep. 'It seemed just like a death from old age to me,' an eyewitness who wishes to remain nameless reports._

"_Suicide is out of the question as well. 'It definitely wasn't suicide,' Felix the Cat, a longtime friend of Gertie's and present at the scene of death, testified. 'Gertie was as happy as could be. He certainly didn't want to die—trust me on this. But it happened to him anyway.'_

"_Funeral services are pending."_

Yakko continued to stare at the article, feeling as if he were about to throw up.

A toon, dead—of natural causes!

Gertie was not the first toon to die. There were plenty of instances of a has-been cartoon star committing suicide, understandably not wanting to face an eternity of being a wash-out. Toons could die—_if they wanted to. _That made all the difference. Besides dip, of course, a toon could only be hurt or killed by something if they were in such a depressed state that they _let _it hurt or kill them. And toons never got sick. Ever.

But now Gertie, a happy, non-suicidal toon, had just keeled over and died. Was it really true, then, that toons weren't immortal after all? And did that mean…

Did that mean that Yakko and his siblings would one day die as well?

Hello Nurse leaned her pretty head out of the doorway leading to Scratchy's office. "Yakko, the doctor will see you now."

Too shocked to shout out his usual "Helloooooooo, nurse!" or even drop the newspaper, the dazed Yakko stepped dumbly into Scratchensniff's office.

O.o.O

"I just can't believe it, Scratchy. This whole article has to be a joke."

"Oh, I doubt zat, Yakko," said Scratchy, furiously scribbling something down in his notepad. Yakko had been too dazed to act as if nothing was wrong, and, in perhaps a desperate state of mind, had actually utilized Scratchy for what he was—a psychiatrist. Or, at the very least, a counselor. He had shown the psychiatrist the article and told him what he feared it meant—that he was mortal. Scratchy, for his part, had been writing in his notebook without stop nearly the entire session, taking advantage of what was probably the first time Yakko had been cooperative at an appointment.

"How can you say that?" Yakko asked. "It's obviously a joke. A really bad one, too. Toons are immortal. We can't die."

"Actually, yes you can," reminded Scratchy.

"Alright, point taken," said Yakko crossly. "But they just don't die of… old age, or whatever it is that supposedly took Gertie."

"Zat's vere you're mistaken, I believe," interrupted Scratchy. "You are forgetting, Yakko, zat ze art of animation is a very new one, less than a century old. Perhaps ze reason ve have never seen a toon die of old age is simply because toons have been too young for zat up until now."

"That still doesn't hold up," said Yakko with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Gertie's…" He quickly added up on his fingers. "Gertie's eighty-four years old. Lots of humans die of old age _before _that. Who's to say—"

"Old age brought on by injury or disease, something zat you toons are immune to," said Scratchy. "I still think it's reasonable to assume zat toons _are _mortal, and zat Gertie simply wore out, something that no toon before has lived long enough to do."

"But… but if that's true, then that means…" Yakko was unable to finish his thought.

"Zat means zat you vill one day die as well," finished Scratchy.

"Thanks for being so helpful, it really cheers me up," muttered Yakko.

"Does death scare you, Yakko?"

"I've never thought about it before!" snapped Yakko. "Mainly because I never thought it would ever happen to me!"

Scratchy opened his mouth to say something, but four chimes of the cuckoo clock interrupted him.

"Drat," muttered Scratchy. "I have another appointment to get to. And just ven ve vere _finally _making some progress!" He opened a large appointment book and flipped through it. "Let's set up an appointment for next veek, same time," he said to Yakko. "Ve'll need to start helping you come to terms vith your mortality." He smiled. "And perhaps, knowing that your time is short, you and your siblings might spend your time doing more _productive_ things for a change."

"Don't talk to me about my siblings," snapped Yakko, spinning on his heel and storming out the door.

O.o.O

Somewhere along his walk back home, Yakko realized that the whole "Gertie is dead" article may just have been a ploy by Scratchy—printing up a fake article and placing it where he knew Yakko would see it, thus giving them something psychological to talk about. It _did _seem like something Scratchy would do, except that when passing a newspaper stand on his way back to the water tower, Yakko noticed that every newspaper had that story. Not as the main headline, but still on the front page, still big news.

Yakko pulled out some spare change and bought one—a different one from the one he had read in Scratchy's waiting room—and read it while climbing up the water tower with his feet. It said more or less the same thing, also citing many of the same things Scratchy did to come to the same conclusion—toons were, in fact, mortal.

When the term "having your life flash before your eyes" is used, it's usually a bit of an exaggeration, but Yakko was a toon, and thus his life really was flashing before him, in full sound and color, as he opened up the WB logo on the water tower. Lots of running. Lots of irritating people who deserved to be irritated. Lots of anvils, lots of wicked puns, lots of baffling sight gags.

But Scratchy was right… there was nothing meaningful, nothing productive.

And for the first time, Yakko knew that there WASN'T all the time in the world to remedy that.

Yakko pulled the WB logo open and was nearly blown off the tower from the blast of sound. A boombox was shaking with impossibly loud music. Molly Hatchet, actually. "Shake the House Down". And Yakko's two siblings, Wakko and Dot, were doing just that. They were bouncing off the walls with more energy than a kindergarten class hyped up on sugar. The support beams of the water tower were literally shaking, which was Wakko and Dot's intent.

Yakko could only stare.

They were mortal, too.

"Hi, Yakko!" said Dot in greeting. Her facial expression immediately changed upon seeing Yakko's, however. "Wakko!" she shouted. "It looks like we've got a code forty-six on our hands!"

Wakko stopped jumping—in midair. "You don't mean…"

"The horror." Dot sounded terrified. "It looks like Yakko accidentally caught sight of a Barney episode."

"The only cure for that is a Don Knotts marathon!" cried Wakko, throwing his hat at the boombox, shutting it off. Like a boomerang, the hat came flying back to the middle Warner sibling, who caught it with ease and placed it back on his head.

"No, no," Yakko said, finally finding his voice.

"What, there's another cure?" asked Wakko, sounding confused.

"That's not what I mean," moaned Yakko, sitting down on the couch, rubbing his face in his hands.

Wakko and Dot shared a worried glance. What was troubling Yakko was obviously, as hard as it was to fathom, even more worrisome than Barney.

"What's wrong, Yakko?" Dot asked, her voice taking on a gentle, worried pitch that she rarely needed to assume.

Yakko looked up at his brother and sister, feeling even more despair. The thought of he, himself dying was bad enough, but now it was three times worse. The thought of his siblings dying was enough to make him totally break down and lose it. He loved them to pieces—although he rarely explicitly showed it. Sappiness was one of his major pet peeves, and his love for them, if ever fully realized by an enemy, was a weakness that could bring even the witty, fast talking, oldest Warner brother to his knees.

And besides, Yakko had always just assumed that he would have his siblings forever.

An assumption that was now shattered to pieces.

What if they died before him? How would he be able to stand it?

And yet, if _he _died first, would they be able to take care of themselves? They had always been completely capable, yet Yakko still worried, the eternal burden of being the oldest sibling. He couldn't possibly leave them.

"Read this," he said, handing Wakko the newspaper and pointing to the article. Wakko and Dot both read it silently.

Yakko watched them, waiting for a reaction. However, besides their eyes growing about half a size wider in mild shock (which is not a very big change in size for a cartoon), there was not much of a reaction at all. After a while, Wakko glanced at Dot, who glanced back at him. Wakko set the paper down.

"Well," said Dot quietly, "that was…"

"Almost a relief," said Wakko, in nearly a whisper.

"A _relief?" _Yakko shouted. "Did you read the right article? It means that we're all going to die!"

"Yeah, I know," said Wakko. "And I… I never did tell you guys this, but the thought of living forever was…" Wakko, never very good with words, just shrugged. "It was almost scary," he finally said. "I mean… living forever would get kind of boring after awhile."

"You're not… scared?" Yakko asked in shock.

"Well, a little bit," admitted Wakko.

"It _is _a bit of a blow to realize that our time is limited, as it were," said Dot. "It's… it's just… _irritating."_

"It's more than irritating," said Yakko, smiling almost morbidly.

"Well, what I mean is… I would like it if I could at least age a little before I die," said Dot. "I mean, I've spent nearly seventy years as an eight-year-old. Mel would rather find a babysitter for me than date me—and technically I'm older than he is! I don't want to die as an eight-year-old. A twenty-year-old, maybe…"

"Well, maybe we could age a little bit," said Wakko with a shrug. "It's been fun being a kid and all, but you're right… I've been ten for too long. We could probably age if we wanted to…"

"Just so that we're teenagers, at least," said Yakko. "Older teenagers. I could go up to twenty—"

"But that's not fair," interrupted Dot. "If you were twenty, then Wakko would be seventeen and I'd be fifteen. Go up to twenty-five, so I could be twenty and Wakko could be twenty-three."

"I don't want to be twenty-five!" cried Yakko. "That would be an adult!"

"Oh, adult and kid are just states of mind," said Wakko, sounding unusually refined. "All three of us are sixty-eight years old. We don't act like adults, but we don't act like kids, either. If we let our bodies age, our minds wouldn't. At least, I think so."

"This is silly, anyway," said Dot. "We're not going to die tomorrow."

"We could," muttered Yakko. "Gertie was only sixteen years older than us, you know."

"That means we've got sixteen years, give or take," said Dot. "I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to spend those years sitting around up here and talking about how to best spend our lives. I want to spend them having fun! When I die, I don't want to have any regrets."

Yakko gave Dot a smile of wonder. Wakko was right about their "ages" being irrelevant—that wasn't the type of speech an eight-year-old would give.

"We're not even sure if we _can _age, anyway," Dot continued.

"We're cartoon characters," said Wakko. "We can do anything."

"We can talk about this later," said Yakko, sounding uncomfortable.

Dot raised an eyebrow. "Does death scare you, Yakko?" she asked.

Funny, thought Yakko. That was the exact same question Scratchy had asked him.

"Yeah, actually, it does," he said, standing up. "It scares me because I don't know what's waiting for us when we die, if anything. It scares me because I don't know when or where it'll happen. It scares me because if you guys die on me I'll be all alone, and if I die on you then you won't have anyone to take care of you."

Wakko shrugged. "Maybe… maybe we'll all die at the same time."

"Oh, come on, Wakko, what are the chances of that?" Yakko asked.

"We could all commit suicide together," Dot suddenly said. "Right now. We could light candles and chant ancient voodoo, and stab ourselves in the guts and let our bodily fluids leak all over the floor as we twitch in agony as our life slowly ebbs from us."

Yakko and Wakko stared.

"Dot, you seem to have this all planned out," Yakko finally said.

"Do you _want _to kill yourself?" Wakko asked.

"No, of course not," said Dot. "But if it would make Yakko feel better…"

"Heck no." Yakko sat back down on the couch, Wakko and Dot joining him. "No one's going to commit suicide in this house when I'm here!"

"Yes, _Dad," _Wakko and Dot both said.

"Although I wouldn't really be able to punish you," said Yakko, giggling.

"But seriously, Yakko…" Dot wrapped her arms around her oldest brother's waist and hugged him tightly. "Don't worry about dying. If humans can do it, then so can we."

"Dot's right," said Wakko, also hugging his brother. "We'll be ready for death when it comes. Besides, I _did _die once, remember? And it was nothing, really. It didn't hurt or anything."

"That's right, I'd almost forgotten about that," laughed Yakko. He put his arms around his siblings' shoulders, return their hugs. "Now, are there any good movies on tonight, or shall we just sit around and make a list of things that we want to do before we die?"

"Man, I've never thought about all I wanted to do," admitted Dot. "And since I know that I don't have all the time in the world, I'd better get cracking on this stuff… I've always wanted to travel the Amazon river!"

"And play bass guitar in a rock band," said Yakko.

"And floss my teeth with an electric eel," said Wakko.

"You're insane, Wakko," said Yakko.

"Write a best-selling novel!" cried Dot.

"Start a collection of celebrity underwear!" cried Wakko.

"Have sex!" cried Yakko.

Wakko and Dot exchanged glances.

"Scratchy's right, Yakko. You _are _obsessed," Wakko finally said.

"We should write all this stuff down," said Dot.

"We could," said Yakko thoughtfully. "Or we could just watch tonight's monster movie, and do this later."

"We _don't _have unlimited time anymore, Yakko," Dot pointed out.

The three siblings thought this over for a moment.

"Monster movie," Yakko finally said.

"Monster movie," Wakko agreed.

"Monster movie," said Dot, grinning.


End file.
